


Once Upon a Time in New Jersey

by Nicnac



Series: Elementary Falls [4]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: As you do, Bedtime Stories, Elementary Falls AU, Family, Fluff, Gen, telling your life story from a 3rd person POV, time skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 20:25:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7655524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nicnac/pseuds/Nicnac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mabel wants a bedtime story about twins. Stan obliges.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Upon a Time in New Jersey

“Sorry about the sleeping arrangements, kids,” Stan said, tucking Dipper and Mabel in side-by-side in his own bed. “We’ll get your room set up tomorrow, I promise. Goodnight, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Our story, Grunkle Stan,” Mabel protested.

“Stories,” corrected Dipper. They insisted on two stories every night: one for Dipper and one for Mabel.

“I don’t know where your books are right now. I mean, they’re in one of these boxes, but I don’t know which one. How about I read you four stories tomorrow night instead, huh?”

“You can make up the stories,” Dipper suggested.

“I want mine to be about twins!” Mabel exclaimed.

Now there was an idea. There was no doubt that Stan was good at making up stories; it was practically what he did for a living. But when it came to stories about twins, he didn’t necessarily need to make any up. He wasn’t ready to tell the kids the full truth yet, because he didn’t think they were really old enough to understand – hell, even he didn’t fully understand it, and he’d lived it – and they weren’t old enough to get how important it was to keep everything a secret. But they were definitely old enough for a story or two.

“Our story begins in 1960-something, in Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey.”

“Grunkle _Stan_ ,” Mabel interrupted, “a story has to begin with ‘once upon a time.’”

“Alright, yeesh. Once upon a time, in Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey there was a pair of twins: two boys –“

“Boo!”

“Hey, who’s telling this story here, me or you?” Mabel pouted and crossed her arms, but didn’t offer and more objections, so Stan continued. “Like I was saying, they were twin boys named… Sixer and, uh, Lee.”

“Sixer is a weird name,” Dipper said, which was pretty rich coming from someone who wanted people to call him Dipper.

“Everyone’s a critic. For your information, Sixer was his nickname. You see, the kids were practically identical, except Sixer had six fingers on each of his hands.”

“Like your funny gloves,” said Dipper.

“Do you kids want to hear the story or not?” Stan demanded, using his annoyance to cover for the fact that he really didn’t want to address Dipper’s comment at the moment.

“Yes, Grunkle Stan,” the kids chorused.

“Then be quiet for a minute and let me tell it. Now, Sixer and Lee spent a lot of time wandering the beach looking for adventures…”

Despite the constant interruptions, something about his story about him and Ford finding that old sailboat and stealing it away from the pirate ghosts haunting it – okay, maybe that part he made up – must’ve gone over real well with the kids, because when it was Dipper’s turn for a story he asked for another one about Sixer and Lee. And both of them asked for one again the next night, and the next. The night after that they both wanted something different, but over the years, they kept coming back to Sixer and Lee.

 

* * *

 

Stan’s footsteps felt heavy as he walked up to the twins’ attic room. He’d been putting off telling them the truth about what was going on for three and a half years, constantly rationalizing to himself that they were too young to know. He had thought maybe after they’d turned ten, not on their birthday itself because that day should be about them, not Stan and his greatest screw-up, but the day after… But then here he was, with the kids not quite nine years old yet, and with a timer ticking down, maybe a week or two at the most, until everything came out, one way or another. And if it all worked out, this would be Stan’s greatest achievement. He just wasn’t sure the kids would see it that way.

When he pushed the door to their bedroom open, both kids were fast asleep, which, of course they were; Stan had put them to bed himself hours ago, before he started working on the portal. One of them must’ve had a nightmare earlier, because they were now both curled up together in Mabel’s bed. Stan watched them both for a minute, then decide to go back downstairs. He had to tell them soon, but he could wait until morning at least, couldn’t he?

“Grunkle Stan?” came Mabel’s confused and bleary voice.

“Hey sweetie. I just came to bring you up your book,” Stan said, walking over to Mabel’s bedside table and putting Journal #2 on it. His copy of the pages was still nestled safely down in the basement, right next to the photocopy of Journal #3 and the actual Journal #1. “I’m all done with it. Thanks for getting it for me.”

“Aww, shucks, Grunkle Stan,” Mabel said, sitting up and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Sure you did. Do you think Gideon would have brought that thing over here if it weren’t for you? Kid you gotta understand how important these Journals are. I…” Stan paused. He still didn’t know if he could do this, but he couldn’t not say anything. He sat down on sideways on Mabel’s bed and steeled himself. “Hey Mabel, wake your brother up; I’ve got a story I want to tell you both.”

Mabel laid her head back down on the pillow, so she was about an inch away from her brother’s face, and then screamed, “Wake up!” That didn’t really seem to be the best way to go about it, but then, Stan couldn’t argue with results.

“Mabel? What’s going on?” Dipper asked, instantly alert and a bit frightened. Guess that answered the question of who had had the nightmare.

“Grunkle Stan is going to tell us a story.”

“In the middle of the night?” Dipper said incredulously.

“Anytime is a good time for a story,” Mabel said. “What’s this one about?”

“Sixer and Lee. It’s one I haven’t told you kids before,” said Stan.

“Yay!” Mabel cheered, and Dipper’s earlier skepticism seemed to vanish in the face of his excitement to hear a story on their favorite subject. “Once upon a time in New Jersey there was a pair of twins named Sixer and Lee,” Mabel began.

And so Stan told them. A bit haltingly at first, but his voice got steadier as he got lost in the flow of the memories, of the science fair and West Coast Tech and realizing that he was going to lose his brother and making the second biggest mistake of his life. He was so absorbed in the story that it startled him when Mabel interrupted.

“You’re telling it wrong!”

“Yeah, there’s no way Sixer would just let their dad kick Lee out,” Dipper agreed.

“You gotta understand, Sixer was really upset. He just lost out on his chance to get into his dream school because of Lee. And yeah, maybe it was an accident, but Lee still should have told Sixer about it, so he could fix it.” Stan still didn’t think he deserved getting kicked out back then, and having some small show of support or sympathy from Ford, even if it hadn’t made any difference in the end, would have meant the world to him. But after years and years of thinking it over, he thought he maybe got what Ford had been going through, at least a little bit. “Besides, Sixer was a teenager and one thing I can tell you about teenagers is they’re all idiots. Even, no, especially the smart ones.”

Mabel threw her arms around her brother. “I promise I’ll never ever let Grunkle Stan kick you out, Dipper, no matter how stupid a teenager you turn into.”

“Me too,” Dipper said.

“Hey, hey, nobody is kicking anybody out,” Stan said. “Do you two have any idea how hard it is to get child labor that’s both free and mostly legal?”

“And because you love us too much and you’re way better at being a dad than the stupid poophead in the story,” Mabel said, dragging Dipper with her so they could both grab Stan in a group hug.

Stan found himself rapidly blinking – just to clear out the dust that got in his eyes! Yeah, dust. “Thanks kid. That, that means a lot. And things did get a lot better for Lee, eventually.”

“You promise?”

Stan looked at the two of them, staring up at him with hope and trust and love shining in their eyes. “Yeah, I promise.

“But first he had to spend some years as a traveling salesman,” Stan said, continuing his story. “I mean, he tried the treasure hunting thing first, but it turns out that gold is some kind of rare metal, so he became a traveling salesman instead. And he did” – cold winter days, huddled and shivering in his car; hot summer nights, sweating in a Columbian jail cell; the taste of blood in his mouth as he chewed his way out of the trunk of a car – “alright. Then, over ten years later, Lee was living in New Mexico when he got a postcard in the mail.  It was from his brother, and all it said on it was ‘please come.’ And on the other side was ‘Gravity Falls.’”

Dipper squealed in excitement. “I was right: Sixer did write the Journals!”

“What, because of the six fingers? I’m not saying you’re wrong kid, but you know that Sixer wasn’t exactly the only person in the world with polydactyly.” Something Shermie always used to tell Ford was that one in five hundred babies was born with some kind of extra fingers or toes. Stan didn’t know for sure if that was true, but Shermie was definitely the kind to do the research, if only so no one could call him out as wrong later.

“Sixer had a pet dinosaur?” Mabel exclaimed.

“No, polydactyly,” Dipper said, stumbling over the word a bit like someone who’d only read it before and not heard it out loud, “is when someone has more than five fingers or toes on each hand; I looked it up before. But how come you know that, Grunkle Stan?”

“What, I can’t look things up?” Stan said. “But we’re getting away from the story. So Lee gets this postcard in the mail and drops everything so he can drive up to Oregon to help his brother. Once he gets there, Sixer’s house is all boarded up with signs telling people to stay out, and Sixer was paranoid and all strung out like he just drank a whole pitcher full of Mabel Juice. He showed Lee this portal he built that could open the door to other dimensions. He said he’d realized that the portal could be used by bad people to do bad things, so he had to shut it down and hide all his research notes. He gave the last of the notes to Lee and told him to take them to the ends of the Earth where no one would ever find them.

“Now, maybe Sixer didn’t mean it the way Lee took it, but it sounded to him like Sixer called him all the way across the country just to tell Lee to get as far away from Sixer as possible. So Lee got mad and threatened to burn Sixer’s notes. Then Sixer got mad and the two of them started fighting. They were both so angry they didn’t notice until too late that the portal had gotten turned on accidentally. Sixer got sucked in and then the portal shut back down, leaving Lee all alone again.

“He tried for weeks to get the portal working, but without all his brother’s notes he couldn’t figure it out. Eventually he ran out of food and had to go into town to get more, but when he got there everyone confused him for Sixer. And that’s when Lee realized, if he told everyone that he was Sixer, then no one would ever try and come to kick him out of Sixer’s house, and he could have as long as it took to bring his brother back.”

It was silent for a moment or two, before Mabel busted out with, “And then what happened?”

“I don’t know, kiddo. That’s pretty much as far as I’ve got.”

Mabel blew a raspberry. “That’s a terrible ending, Grunkle Stan. Oh, I know! Next the super twins Mabel and Dipper heard all about sad story of Sixer and Lee and decided to help. And so they and their Grunkle Stan and their big brother Soos used the power of the Journals to work together with Lee and fix the portal. Then Sixer was saved and he and Lee hugged all their problems out, and everyone lived happily ever after.”

“Is that right? I gotta say, that sounds like a pretty good ending to me. I hope that’s how it works out,” Stan said.

“I know that’s how it works out. The power of Mabel will make it so,” she declared.

“Yeah, well the power of Mabel needs her beauty rest before she does anything else,” said Stan, getting up. “I’ll see you two in the morning.

“Goodnight, Grunkle Stan. We love you.”

“I love you kids too.”

Stan flicked off the light to their room, and was about to leave when Dipper called out to him. “Hey, Grunkle Stan? Did you ever have a brother?” That kid was way too smart sometimes.

“Course I did: your Grandpa Shermie. That’s how I ended up with you two gremlins, remember?” Stan said easily.

“No, I mean did you ever have a _twin_ brother?”

“That is a very good question. Tell you what, why don’t you ask me again in a week or two?” One way or another, it should all be over by then.


End file.
